"It is Monday."

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There are three common ways of saying "It's Monday" in French. This expression is idiomatic.

Nous sommes lundi

C'est lundi

On est lundi

Note that this is not "Today is Monday", just "It is Monday". If you want to say, Today is Monday, you may say "Aujourd'hui nous sommes lundi" or one of the other variations above. You never say "il est lundi" unless your replying to a specific question, e.g., Quand est le repas ? Il (i.e., "le repas") est lundi. http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/dates_2.htm

The literal translation is not idiomatic in English. Would you normally say "We are Monday" when you mean "it's Monday"? Sometimes learners try very hard to translate word-for-word and end up with expressions in English that are really not used. The French say "nous sommes lundi" which translates to "it's Monday". Translating correct French into correct (idiomatic/natural) English sometimes means that it is not literal at all. There are many examples of this which you will learn in time.

>Sometimes learners try very hard to translate word-for-word and end up with expressions in English that are really not used

Thank you for this comment, I think I've been doing this and getting frustrated and confused. I'll have to try to remember that French is not just English written in code, it's another language which expresses ideas in completely different ways!

i dont know if we really say this in english, but what it literally translates into, or the closest equivilant i must say would be like you were saying: 'we're in the month of march" likewise "we're in monday" so to say. I was able to come up with this with french being close to the language (grammatical structure/ and idiom wise) of my native tongue. let me know if that made sense and i'll be happy to answer any others if you have some. : )

No. That sounds like broken French to me. I would guess that you're trying to ask if today is Monday, but the structure does not really work that way. I suppose you could say, "C'est lundi, aujourd'hui ?" But you don't need "aujourd'hui" there at all.

I'm not sure, I guess it just is. Many languages such as Spanish, French and Swedish don't capitalize days of the week, months of the year, nationalities, etc. Maybe a French speaker or a native speaker of any such language can give some input.

But now that you've said something different: you can't apply English capitalization rules to other languages. In English, the days of the week are capitalized. In French, they are not (unless they're the first word of a sentence).

@Horses113 - off and on, about 35 years. At the moment, I live in Quebec, in a francophone part of the city, and married into a francophone family (some of whom speak very little English), so I use French on a daily basis. I use Duolingo to refresh my grammar, since--just as with speaking English in casual conversation--one tends to get sloppy.